Chornalth Adventures - Liga

Sia Draja

Description:

The Esoterica Ebonwand is a large magical tome, approximately 2′ × 3′, almost 8" thick, bound in what appears to be black dragonhide. A heavy chain of an unknown dark, lusterless metal, 8’ in length, depends from a heavy ring of the same material set in the upper edge of the tome’s binding.

First created by the Society of the Ebonwand in -5506 CY, the tome detailed a series of rituals that their founder, the arcanist Welmara Jasarack, claimed to have received in a series of visions. In reality she was both dangerously insane and incredibly brilliant; the rituals she outlined worked, often better than even she had dared to dream.

Of special interest was a series of rituals entitled “Magickal Energy, It’s Undoing and Restructuring”, a complex working requiring a small army of dedicated arcane casters that under the proper circumstances claimed to be able to completely tear asunder the nature of magic and recreate it from the ground up.

The current “edition” of the Esoterica was copied three times. Each copy is rumored to be the soul-prison of a different Suloise wizard that had run afoul of the Society for one reason or another. The “original” is the prison for a wizard known as Sia Draja, a figure of some tragedy in Ancient Suloise history, Born the daughter of Naxdor Draja, the Court Wizard to Emperor Hwellos II, she was made into a vampire at the age of nine to punish her father for some peccadillo he’d been involved in at Court. Unable to bring himself to kill his only child, he allowed her to exist in undeath, and trained her in his craft. She was eventually his undoing, as she drained him of blood when she turned 50.

Sia became a very learned and potent wizard, and even though she already possessed a form of immortality via her vampirism, she chafed under that curse, and sought the purity of lichdom in her 300th year. When a member of the Society attempted to recruit her a decade later, she slew him and began a twelve year vendetta. Sia was finally defeated by the Society in -4003 CY, and her soul bound into the Esoterica both as a punishment and to bind her as a guardian of the Tome.

Sia has no knowledge concerning the location or disposition of the other three copies, nor has she any clue as to who might be bound to them as she was. She was (and still is) a 20th level wizard/5th level Mage of Power/7th Tier Archmage. She also has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Tome’s contents, and can manipulate it’s pages and the chain connected to it at will, as they are now all the body she truly possesses.

More than a glorified table of contents, Sia is in a very real sense, the soul of the book. When the Rain of Colorless Fire destroyed the City of Suendrako around her, she buried herself deep in the catacombs beneath the old chapterhouse where the Society had met. When Abrais Skath and his kinsmen plundered those catacombs, she revealed herself to them, and was delighted to learn that they had come for her. By pretending to be a mere human child, she has learned much about Dhaeros the Arcanoth and his plans for the ritual she contains….